Synopsis:
This Court, in a review of the taxation (by its Taxing Master) of the Respondent’s bills of costs in an unsuccessful application for leave to appeal, reiterated the six principles it had previously laid down guiding the review of a taxation in the Constitutional Court. The Court held that an additional principle is that where the fee charged is time-related the amount of time actually spent in preparing an appeal cannot be decisive in determining the reasonableness, between party and party, of a fee for that particular work. Such a method of calculation, namely so much per hour, placed a premium on slow and inefficient work and resulted in a fee being charged which could be totally out of proportion to the value of the services actually rendered. The Court set aside the Taxing Master’s allocatur for the relevant items in the bill of costs.
